Worcestershire Energy Strategy: stakeholder engagement

Lead Organisation

Overview

The Department for Business, Energy and Industry Strategy (BEIS) has provided all 38 Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in England with funding to develop an energy strategy for their area. Worcestershire LEP commissioned one of our members, Encraft, to write the strategy for the area and SWM worked in partnership with them to run three stakeholder workshops. SWM also led on the conduction of six interviews that took place after the workshops to engage in-depth with individuals who could not attend the workshops. This involved asking a series of questions to drill deep into the expertise of key local stakeholders. Along with contributing our thoughts on the draft strategy, we also circulated a consultation to key stakeholders so that they could feed in their comments before the final version was developed in December 2018.

Aims of the workshops

Learn more about the Worcestershire LEP energy strategy, including its context, vision and progress.

Contribute to the development of the energy strategy, including an opportunity to feed in local knowledge and project activity.

Network with colleagues and ask questions about the strategy when required.

Results and achievements

Generated scores of ideas reflecting practitioner viewpoints on how the LEP should embrace the energy agenda once the strategy is completed.

Helped the LEP to focus its future energy activity around the priorities of energy efficiency, fuel poverty, electric transport, energy supply and demand, renewables and other areas.

Provided the LEP with a repository of local organisations that are both experts on the energy agenda and passionate about a low carbon energy future.

Built on, and shared knowledge of, existing leading practice.

“So that this strategy is fit for purpose, reflecting local needs and can enable economic growth, we needed to ensure that we engaged the views of as wide a range of stakeholders and experts in the low carbon energy sector across the county as possible. We were pleased to work with SWM who enabled this engagement to happen in an open and structured way with a wide range of relevant stakeholders. Moreover, given their vast experience and excellent track record, we could trust them to ensure that all feedback was captured and fed into the development of the strategy” – Luke Willetts, Director of Operations, Worcestershire LEP.